U.S. Government Must Resume DACA, Accept New Applications, Federal Judge Rules

On April 24, 2018, Judge John D. Bates of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program must be resumed. Furthermore, Judge Bates ruled that the government must resume accepting new applications for DACA.

In his ruling, Judge Bates said that the Trump administration’s decision to rescind DACA—which protects undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children from being deported—was “predicated primarily on its legal judgment that the program was unlawful,” noting that this legal judgment was “virtually unexplained.”

Judge Bates stayed his decision for 90 days to allow the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees DACA, an opportunity to better explain its rescission decision. Failure to do so, the judge ruled, would require the DHS to “accept and process new as well as renewal DACA applications.”

While federal judges in Brooklyn and San Francisco also ruled against the Trump administration’s rescission of DACA in recent months, Judge Bates is the first to require that the government accept new applications for the program.